Italy’s data protection authority has ordered a block on Chinese artificial intelligence revelation DeepSeek, it said late on Thursday.
The regulator said it has ordered Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence — the Chinese companies behind the DeepSeek chatbot — to stop processing Italians’ data with immediate effect.
The move comes after DeepSeek apparently told the authorities it wouldn’t cooperate with a request for information made by the agency.
“Contrary to what was found by the authority, the companies have declared that they do not operate in Italy and that European legislation does not apply to them,” the Italian regulator said. This response “was deemed completely insufficient,” it added.
The regulator has also opened an investigation, it said.
The Chinese AI firm recently emerged as a fierce competitor to industry leaders like OpenAI, when it launched a competitive model to ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and other leading AI-fueled chatbots that it claimed was created at a fraction of the cost of others.
The release triggered an industry panic and markets shock in the U.S., as key shares in the tech sector dropped sharply on Monday.
The ban is not the first time the Italian privacy authority has taken such a step; it also blocked OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2023. It later allowed OpenAI to re-open its service in Italy after meeting its demands.
POLITICO has approached DeepSeek for comment.
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